Capitalism Exploits Us

Listen, Pause and Reflect. You do not have to be a genius to figure this out. Just use your common sense.

 

Capitalism is, I think, really the production of separation. The alienation of labor and the delineation of one's work life as being separate from one's true life forms a logic that reproduces itself through the entirety of late capitalism. Since every dollar you earn is life that was essentially wasted, you become a participant in the destruction of your own soul and dependent on it. That principle of separation is only probing deeper into lives as the development of social media allows the enclosed public to creep into what was once private. We're encouraged to partition our lives off, to never experience anything as an untarnished whole. Everything must instantly be dissected and put in the proper boxes. It's a machine for neuroses.

 

So if the workers make all the decisions, is there still some sort of hierarchy? I'm not sure a company can be competitive if every allocation decision is determined by popular vote.

 

Clearly the element of with a crew is missing in all this! I personally cant remember a single time I have worked for the same pay as all the rest of the crew where one or two didn't THINK(?) they were harder workers and deserved more than the others!

The entire piece was unrealistic in real world practice!

 

I'm just trying to imagine how it would work. I spend months of technical, business need and consumer interest research to make product change recommendations. If we just used popular vote instead of evidence-based decision making, I think our business would be dead within a quarter or so. But if popular vote really is the best way to allocate resources and make decisions, than any business run this way should be able to compete against businesses run otherwise. You can probably work this way when everyone involved is an expert in the field, such as a team of physicians or architects, but I don't think it is going to work for every sector.

 

The problem will always devolve to petty in house disputes and under these type ideology's the group is of equal share! So you will basically be stuck with the decenter or give into his/their demands and inequality breaks way to capitalism People are just capitalist at the core, everyone puts themselves of more value then the next guy! If anything the leftist on this site have made this monumentally clear!

Now think about working with twenty of these egotistical charged folks, barring in mind they're all equal with a VOICE?

 

Well it's just socialism. That never works. It necessarily ends in tyranny.

Companies will not innovate if they do not have leaders. Such an economy only works if demand and supply work as a constant. We can look at falling petroleum prices and Venezuela's predicament.

 

I am a die hard Capitalist who happens to like a smattering of socialism in the mix.

Socialism begets poor quality in everything - Capitalism begets wealth for everyone - take a look at the telephones and computers and televisions and cars we enjoy; take a look at the internet of things, the quality of the varied modes of entertainment we spend our time with. All of us, rich and poor live better lives because of capitalism.

All of this is a result of a system that rewards hard work and productivity. It invites and rewards investments that see the average man become well-off. It has helped us build homes for ourselves in the suburbs and has helped maintain good living in the cities.

Socialism supports the unproductive - whether they are that way because of circumstance or of their own design. In a true socialist society, these people would still be at the bottom of the pile because of their inability to produce, or their laziness.

In the American system of capitalism, bad management or bad management policies invite unions which will siphon all that they can from the company without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs

Our many and varied government and private social programs are a result of taxes and donations from capitalist individuals and groups.

I thank God for American Capitalism

 

Yawn.

 

Yeah, I am sure you were also yawning when people like me were warning you not to support Bush's invasion of Iraq etc., etc.

 

In a capitalist society, if you don't like working for other people, you can work for yourself, it's that simple. In a socialist/communist society, if you don't like working for other people, too ****ing bad. That is the difference.

 

In a communist country I think Trump would be saying at his job "would you like fries with that?"

 

I think a lot of this is due to the stark distinction socialists make between personal property and private property, but I think that distinction gets pretty difficult to maintain when put to the test. All theories and justifications of property are problematic and difficult when fully explored. I'll freely admit that. But be weary of "easy" answers.

 

That's extraordinarily false! How could you say anything like that at all! How disrespectful! I mean . . . who would put Trump in a customer-facing role?

 

My bad. Yes, he'd probably be saying, instead, "can you please lift your feet - I need to sweep under that table".

 

Study into worker-owned/controlled cooperatives. This is the direction socialism is going. Look into Mondragon and videos by Richard Wolff and Democracy at Work. In worker co-ops the member-workers each own ONE share of company stock and only member-workers can own the stock. The stock is mainly for the purpose of qualifying them for a vote. And the workers hire and fire the CEO and Board members, some of whom must be member-workers according to Articles of Incorporation. And Rutgers University did an in-depth study of such co-ops and found that they are on average 4% more productive than equivalent traditional "top-down" corporations, and a whopping 14% more profitable. Plus they provide far greater job security and better income.

 

Here. Try this. Click on "Membership" and then "OUR MEMBERS".
https://usworker.coop/democratic-workplaces/

 

Oh, will do, and that's exactly the sort of info I'm looking for. The thing is, even under capitalism, if these arrangements are more productive . . . we should default to them. As ideological as I can be, I'm completely open to pragmatic arguments.

 

Your opinion. Nothing more. Try actually looking into it. The Mondragon corporation began with a few workers making home appliances. Today it has over 80,000 workers, has many subdivisions, the CEO pay is determined by workers' vote and currently is 8.5 times the lowest paid worker, they have their own bank and their own university, and manufacture in 4 countries making everything from basics to high-tech solar panels in a cutting-edge production environment.

 

The important thing is that capitalism is dedicated to maximizing profit and so often harms workers and consumers, but WSDEs ("Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises" - worker co-ops) are dedicated to maximum consideration and benefit for workers and people. If you are a member of a WSDE, you aren't going to vote to ship your job overseas for a bigger profit!

 

And BTW, if you're interested I have a ton of links to articles, legislation, support orgs., workers' stories, and other documentation. I can save you lots of search time cuz I've already done plenty.

 

RA, it looks like you looked into this as you said you would. BTW, I just got an email from Richard Wolff today. He said...

"Lee Carter just won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Running as a Democrat, he defeated an incumbent Republican leader by over 10 percentage points. Carter is - and his campaign was - explicitly democratic socialist. Republicans’ red-baiting failed. After the election, Carter told Jacobin magazine that his positions were developed, in part, from the economic analyses we at Democracy at Work present across our platforms."

Things are happening!

 

Poly, all that is, is propaganda, not knowledge. You know that, right?

 

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Bullshit.